The quietest hurricane year in a decade officially ends in three weeks, but meteorologists and disaster managers on the Gulf and Florida coasts agree that the season is already over. "We dodged a bullet this year," says meteorologist Gerry Bell of the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center.

Airline passengers in the USA are getting bumped off flights more frequently than at any time in the last six years, the government reported Thursday. Some 16,300 passengers were bumped against their wishes in the April-June quarter, a rate of 1.12 passengers per 10,000. That rate is one-third higher than a year earlier.